Legendary amateur golfer Nick Weslock passes away at age 89

[Kilroy]

There was nothing Nick Weslock loved more than the game of golf.

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[mpare]

A lot of younger golfers would not remember him, but he was one of Canada's stars.

[Golfbum]

This is an interesting article from the local paper here in St Thomas. Nick Weslock was very mucn involved in The Early Bird Tournament at the course I work at. This event has a long history and many storied champions, Weslock included.
Read the article, it is interesting the influence this man had on golf in this area.

He put the 'early' in Early Bird
Nick the Wedge dead at 89
Friday November 02, 2007
By Times-Journal Staff
and The Canadian Press
There was nothing Nick Weslock, the man who put the “early” in the Early Bird, loved more than the game of golf.
The legendary amateur player and member of Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame stayed close to the game right up until the day he died. Health issues such as multiple hip replacements, a gall bladder ailment and hernia operation couldn’t keep him from the golf course.
“Golf was everything for him,” his daughter Sheri-Lee Weslock said Wednesday. “Nothing would hold him back -- he’d get up in the morning, have his shower and then he’d be out at the course.”
Weslock died Saturday at Joseph Brant Memorial Hospital in Burlington, Ont., according to his daughter. He was 89.
He had been golfing just days before with a set of clubs that were about a month old.



The game got into Weslock’s blood as a young man after he took a caddie job at Essex Golf and Country Club in Windsor.
Weslock won the Early Bird at St. Thomas Golf and Country Club three times (1972, 1975, 1977), and played in the event since its inception in 1949 when he finished second to Moe Norman of Kitchener, Ont.
Weslock was hotly pursued to play in what was then a July fundraiser for the Union club.
Noting that the layout played well very early in the season, he suggested the tournament (played in August in 1951) be moved to the Victoria Day weekend which it did in 1952.
Weslock and Norman, also a three-time Bird winner (1949, 1950, 1954) were an illustrious pair for the event and became great friends.
The Winnipeg-born Weslock won seven Ontario Opens, eight Ontario Amateurs and four Canadian Amateurs (1957, ‘63, ‘64, ‘66). An engineer by trade who ran a successful auto parts company, Weslock was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1971 and the Royal Canadian Golf Association Hall of Fame in 1972.
He was known as “Nick the Wedge,” a nickname that dated back to the 1947 Canadian Open after a wedge shot that spun back toward the cup.
“I played with (American) Clayton Heafner,” Weslock told the Financial Post in a 1998 interview. “He wouldn’t sign my card because he thought it was an illegal wedge.”
But tournament officials ruled the club was kosher.
Weslock fired a final-round 69 to finish 12-under par at the Toronto-area tournament and fell three shots short of Bobby Locke’s winning score. Still, he had no interest in turning pro.
Before his death, Weslock told his daughter he had lived a good life. He and Norman were close for most of their adult lives, often eating breakfast together. Weslock took his friend’s 2004 death hard.
It was almost fitting then that Weslock died on a Saturday, as did Norman ... a day that in years long since passed they would both having been teeing it up at the Early Bird.

[Baxter]

Guy's thank you for this post. It was a great read.